February 21st, 2012
Who can forget the experience of reading certain short stories for the first time: the sense of foreboding that gradually builds throughout “The Lottery” until it explodes in the horrifying climax; the shocking twist that rocks the reader at the end of “An Occurrence at Owl Cree Bridge”; the delicious irony that wraps “The Gift
February 21st, 2012
Twenty-nine years ago when Peter and I first started work on Little Worlds, neither of us had been teaching for very long, and we didn’t know much. We did, however, know that we loved stories and that we wanted to give our students stories worth loving. Today I am a teacher with over 30 years
February 14th, 2012
Our major changes In its second edition Azulejo has been completely revamped, revised, and rewritten. Attentive to all of the curriculum changes laid out by the College Board, we have also attempted to incorporate the comments and suggestions of seasoned AP Spanish Literature teachers. With these guidelines in mind we introduce the following major changes:
February 14th, 2012
Desperation can be a gift. You are looking for ideas about language teaching. After decades of language teaching I have a few ideas to share. TACTICS is an acronym attached to some language texts from Wayside Publishing. It stands for Through Active Conversation To Individual Communication Skills. Let me put the emphasis on the word
February 14th, 2012
The APprenons team has been busy writing and researching to include the latest updates from the francophone world and the College Board. This experience, thus far, has been a true 21st century project in that we’ve written the entire manuscript using collaborative web tools. We all live in different parts of the country, and we were not able
February 6th, 2012
Can stress be good for kids? The upcoming new edition of How to Study recognizes good stress in today’s learning environment. Good stress includes getting oneself pumped up for an important game – or for a crucial test, for example. But it’s the bad stress that has destructive effects on students’ academic progress.
January 26th, 2012
Writing a good story that is educationally sound, fun, accessible, lively, and interesting enough to keep the students attention from beginning to end is a serious challenge. There are lots of options and lots of choices. Genre, settings, topics, characters, tone, narrative, vocabulary, grammatical progression etc… I decided that a mystery will keep the students
January 18th, 2012
For quite a few years, the books I’ve written on history for middle school kids have been published by two different publishers – Wayside Publishing (Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, and West Meets East) and Pemblewick Press (the Renaissance, two books on Native Americans, two books on China, and Islam). But now they all
January 18th, 2012
“My dog ate my homework,” “I am too stressed out for this,” “I’ve never been a good test-taker,” are all excuses most teachers have heard frequently. In fact, teachers have heard them all. Although excuses may seem real to students using them, the fact is that they have not faced their situation and taken responsibility
November 10th, 2011
After seeing the reaction to my first blog, all I can think is: “So—blogging ain’t my thing”. After all, two comments in two months is not a celebratory endorsement. So let’s see if an activity for teaching vocabulary doesn’t excite even a little more excitement. I will even settle for feigned interest. First, and foremost,
